Future Releases

Recorded in the Uusi Paviljonki Hall, Kauniainen, Finland, on 27–28 October 2012 (Macbeth Overture, Dramatic Overture and Finnish Suite) and 23–24 February 2013 (Altböhmisches Weihnachtslied and Altgermanisches Julfest)

The early death of the Finnish composer Ernst Mielck, in October 1899, two days before his 22nd birthday, robbed music of an extraordinarily gifted musician – he was also a fine pianist – and perhaps one of the major voices of the next generation: the rapid evolution in his language in the three years covered by this CD is striking. The two overtures and cantatas make clear that he was already a gifted composer in the post-Schumann Romantic tradition, and the Finnish Suite written in the last year of his life brings a striking simplification of his textures and what seems to have been a nascent nationalism.

The Czech composer Petr Eben was best known during his lifetime (1929–2007) as one of the world’s finest concert organists. But the Velvet Revolution of 1989 led to the gradual discovery of his music by international audiences and he is now taking his place as one of the major figures in Czech music in the generation after Martinů. This first complete recording of his chamber music for oboe shows how he managed to bring Gregorian chant and Renaissance and Baroque procedures into a feisty and individual modern style.

Handels orchestral masterpiece in a fresh and crisp performance with the Lodz Chamber Orchestra.

The Water Music is a collection of orchestral movements, often considered three suites, composed by George Frideric Handel. It premiered on 17 July 1717 after King George I had requested a concert on the River Thames. The concert was performed by 50 musicians playing on a barge near the royal barge from which the King listened with close friends, including Anne Vaughan, the Duchess of Bolton, the Duchess of Newcastle, Countess of Darlington, the Countess of Godolphin, Madam Kilmarnock, and the Earl of Orkney. The barges, heading for Chelsea or Lambeth and leaving the party after midnight, used the tides of the river. George I was said to have enjoyed the suites so much that he made the exhausted musicians play them three times over the course of the outing.

The String Quartet No. 19 in C Major, KV. 465 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, nicknamed “Dissonance” on account of its unusual slow introduction, is perhaps the most famous of his quartets. It is the last in the set of six quartets composed between 1782 and 1785 that he dedicated to Joseph Haydn.

According to the catalog of works Mozart began early the preceding year, the quartet was completed on January 14, 1785.

The Sharon Quartet, one of the most famous and active string quartets from the Netherlands recorded this program in the nineties.

Michael Chance has established a worldwide reputation as one of the foremost exponents of the male alto voice in all areas of the classical, and is in equal demand as an opera, concert and recording artist.

Michael Chance’s list of recordings is numerous and widespread. He received a Grammy award for his participation in Handel’s Semele for Deutsche Grammophon with John Nelson and Kathleen Battle. He has recorded frequently with John Eliot Gardiner, including the Bach Passions and Cantatas, B Minor Mass, Monterverdi’s Orfeo and L’Incoronazione di Poppea and Handel’s Jeptha, Tamerlano and Agrippina. Other conductors he has recorded with include Trevor Pinnock, Franz Bruggen, Ton Koopman and Nicholas McGegan. On his CD for Deutsche Grammophon, “Michael Chance, the Art of Counter-tenor”, he sings solo alto cantatas by Vivaldi with Trevor Pinnock and the English Concert.

There are in all fifteen songs made memorable herein, not only by Purcell’s music, but also by Chance’s unique delivery of each of them. All three accompanists are ‘tuned in’ and highly sensitive to the singer.

Le Villi is Puccini’s first stage work. It was written for an 1883 competition of one-act operas by the publisher Sonzogno in his periodical Il teatro illustrato, but did not even earn an honorable mention. According to Mosco Carner, this may have been because it was written in such haste that the score was all but illegible. His supporters, who included Arrigo Boito, funded the first production, whose favorable reception led to publication by Giulio Ricordi. Puccini’s mother received the following telegram on the night of premiere at the Teatro dal Verme on 31 May 1884: “Theatre packed, immense success; anticipations exceeded; eighteen calls; finale of first act encored thrice”’.Ricordi urged the composer to expand the work, and Puccini did, producing a new version later that year, which was followed by modifications in 1888, and the final version in 1892.

This recording, originally released on Nuova Era in 2005, features amongst others Jose Cura as Roberto.

Both William Byrd and John Dowland were composers who found themselves somewhat out of sympathy with the times in which they lived, a fact which may help to account for the melancholic strain which pervades much of their music. At first glance, Byrd seems to have enjoyed an eminently successful career: after becoming a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal at the age of twenty-seven, he rapidly consolidated his position ,within the English musical establishment, and in 1575 he and his mentor Thomas Tallis were granted by the Crown the monopoly of music publishing in England. In 1593 Byrd acquired a country estate in Essex, and by the time of his death he was regarded as 'Britanniae Musicae Parens': the father of British music. Yet for all these trappings of respectability, Byrd's position in society was always precarious on account of his Catholic faith. Frequently cited as a recusant, Byrd regularly had crippling fines imposed on him by the courts, and would probably have been subjected to worse persecution had he not enjoyed the patronage of some very powerful friends. His younger contemporary Dowland was not so fortunate in gaining entry to court circles and so spent much of his career as an itinerant lute virtuoso, principally in France, Germany and Denmark. Dowland was suspected of having flirted with popery during an early visit to France and although he later denied having undergone a true conversion to Catholicism, the accusation stuck and probably made it more difficult for him to obtain an English court appointment. His volatile nature may also have counted against him: even when he did secure a permanent position, as Lutenist to the King of Denmark, his regular absences led to him being eventually dismissed from this post. Dowland's Lachrimae (1604) is a remarkable set of ensemble music in which 'Seaven Passionate Pavans' all based on the same four-note descending motif are followed by a sequence of other dances, mainly galliards. Byrd is represented here by a selection of his consort songs and by his Fantasias and In Nomines - both ensemble forms in which he excelled.

Conceived and Produced by ANDREA ANDERMANN

Director GIUSEPPE PATRONI GRIFFI

Cinematography VITTORIO STORARO

Directed for video by BRIAN LARGE

Recorded live in July 1992 - REMASTERED IN HIGH DEFINITION FROM THE ORIGINAL MASTER TAPE.

Contemporary Rome is the setting for this unique and highly innovative version of Puccini’s Tosca, performed in the Roman locations – and at the same times of day – as Puccini had written into his score. Thus the action opens in the beautiful 16th-century church of Sant’Andrea della Valle at noon, where Cavaradossi (Domingo) meets the fugitive Angelotti, moves to the Farnese Palace that evening where Tosca (Catherine Malfitano) dramatically makes a pact with the lustful Scarpia (Ruggero Raimondi), and finally to the battlements of the Castel Sant’Angelo at dawn the following day where the final drama is played out.

COLOUR

REGION CODE: ALL REGIONS

NTSC 4:3 • 114 MINS • L-PCM STEREO

SUBTITLES: ENGLISH / FRENCH / GERMAN /ITALIAN

The soprano Claudia Böttcher and the pianist Jovita Zähl have worked as a duo since 2008. Their concert programmes focus on music from the 20th and 21st centuries. The present CD 'zeit(t)räume' is dedicated to works by Karlheinz Stockhausen and Luciano Berio.

Stockhausen's cycle 'Tierkreis' [Zodiac], originally composed for music boxes, is here presented in a version for soprano and piano. Twelve individually created melodies on texts compiled by Stockhausen himself emphasise the primary qualities of the star signs and connect them with their appropriate seasons, times of day, genders, elements, planets, and stages of growth.

Between 1958 and 2002 Berio wrote 14 sequences for various solo instruments. 'Sequenza III', on a text by the Swiss writer Markus Kutter, is the only true vocal composition of the cycle of works in which a wealth of emotional states, which can be expressed by the voice as the natural instrument of [wo]man, is articulated through sounds, syllables and words. The spectrum includes all possible forms of expression from singing and speaking, whispering and shouting, to laughing and crying.

Between 1952 and 1961 Stockhausen composed eleven 'Klavierstücke' [Piano Pieces]. His 'Klavierstück IX" shows, as an example, the characteristic principle of his serial thinking – to arbitrate gradually as well as organically between pairs of opposites: The composition "conveys forms of musical time: periodicity and an entire series of gradations in the aperiodicity. Static, ‘monotonous’ events are transformed into flexible, ‘polytonal’ ones; they are either placed abruptly next to each other or are mixed in constantly new combinations." (Stockhausen)

Berio’s vocal arrangements in 'Quattro canzoni populari' accentuate an important aspect of his musical thinking: the connection to tradition, without neglecting his impulse toward innovation. The special charm which characterises this vocal work grows out of Berio’s careful new interpretation of this traditional, historical folk song material.